Note 104 — Chapter II · MIMUS AND SCÔP

Vita S. Willelmi (Acta SS. Maii, vi. 801) ‘qui chori iuvenum, qui conventus populorum, praecipue militum ac nobilium virorum, quae vigiliae sanctorum dulce non resonant, et modulatis vocibus decantant qualis et quantus fuerit’; cf. Gautier, i. 66. The merest fragments of such folk-song heroic cantilenae are left. A German one, the Ludwigslied, on the battle of Saucourt (881) is in Müllenhoff und Scherer, Denkmäler deutscher Poesie und Prosa (1892), No. xi; cf. Kögel, i. 2. 86; Gautier, i. 62. And a few lines of a (probably) French one on an event in the reign of Clotaire (†620) are translated into Latin in Helgarius (†853-76), Vita S. Faronis (Historiens de France, iii. 505; Mabillon, Acta SS. Benedictinorum, ii. 610). Helgarius calls the song a ‘carmen rusticum’ and says ‘ex qua victoria carmen publicum iuxta rusticitatem per omnium pene volitabat ora ita canentium, feminaeque choros inde plaudendo componebant.’ The Vita S. Faronis in Acta SS. lx. 612, which is possibly an abridgement of Helgarius, says ‘carmine rustico ... suavi cantilena decantabatur’; cf. Gautier, i. 47; Gröber, ii. 1. 446.